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Today, there are 16.1 million refugees worldwide under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ mandate. Among the refugee population, half of them are children and six million are of primary and secondary school-going age. The number of displaced people around the world has reached unprecedented levels in the recent years since the Syrian crisis escalated. Refugees, because of language and other barriers, face a particularly difficult challenge in attaining even a basic education. Keeping the barriers and challenges in mind, education is now seeking the help of technology to create new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for pathways to education for refugees. This chapter will highlight the contribution of University of the People (https://www.uopeople.edu), a tuition-free, non-profit, American accredited, online university that has been working with refugees to enable access to higher education for those living in refugee camps and other displaced people around the world.

Research conducted on refugees and their learning abilities has generally been myopic in nature, highlighting only the challenges and barriers faced, and less focus has been given to the enormous work and achievements accomplished both by non-profit bodies, educational institutions, and refugees themselves. Research has been conducted in the past where learning has been studied from a psychological perspective, as opposed to drawing on the learner theory. Refugees and asylum seekers have been lumped together as a homogenous group, and studies of single language groups have made conclusions that may not apply to others. This chapter, which serves as the introductory chapter to the book, speaks about the inflow of refugees and the growing need of education for an entire generation displaced from their home countries. The chapter highlights educational access, policies, and the importance of language learning. The last section of this chapter is dedicated to present an overview of the chapters in this book which speaks about some exemplary work done by individuals and institutions from Africa to Germany.